


Wrong Turn

by MaryPSue



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Multiverse, Stan Twin Theory, trust me - Freeform, yep that's a relevant tag for a fic written in 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 16:37:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8721079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: Stanley Pines has always felt out of place.
Several dimensions away, Stanley Pines has been working for thirty years to get his lost twin brother back.





	

Somewhere in the woods of Oregon, there is a small town.

Somewhere on the outskirts of that small town, there is a cabin.

Fireworks bathe its face in red and blue, the pops and bangs echoing from over the lake eerily underscoring the silence that hangs heavy between the trees. Shadows shift over the cabin, the fading light lingering on the edges of sunset casting long fingers of darkness from the trees lining the clearing, reaching out to cup the cabin in hands of shadow.

Apart from the pine branches that shiver in the odd breath of wind, nothing moves.

The door of the cabin stands slightly ajar. One long crack of light spills across the bare boards of the floor, across the rug emblazoned with the stylized triangle, neatly bisecting its single slit-pupiled eye. A sliver of now-red, now-blue brilliance falls across the far wall, across the blurry photograph of something in a lake and across the keypad locking another door, set flush against the wall.

The staircase behind the door is lit in a dim, flickering underwater green, leading down into a well of darkness. The snaps and pops of the fireworks can still be heard down here, but muffled by two storeys of oddities and bare wood and concrete. No other sound penetrates the stillness.

Farther below, the sounds of the fireworks die away completely. Only a low, mechanical whine fills the silence two storeys below the cabin, a low mechanical whine from the slow powering down of the vast machine that dominates the empty room. The bluish light that bathes the expanse of concrete and metal slowly fades as the spinning wheel of light in the centre of the massive metal triangle slows, stops, flickers out. 

Throughout the enormous, empty room, there is only the faint  _tick tick tick_  of cooling metal, and then, finally, silence.

…

Stanley Pines has never belonged to the world.

He’s known this for as long as he can remember, since he was first able to look down at his own six-fingered hands and recognise himself as  _different_. But it’s not only the physical. There’s something, something inside him that just…doesn’t click. No matter where he is, no matter who he’s with, no matter how happy he may be, he’s always had the sense that he doesn’t quite belong. 

That was why the portal had called to him. It had been more than an intellectual exercise, more than mere validation of his own superior intelligence. He hadn’t been able to explain to Fiddleford just why it had been such a betrayal when Stanford had turned his back on the project, tried to get them to shut it down, even after Stan had explained how dangerous it was. Maybe that was a good thing, because Fiddleford had just eventually turned against Lee, too. 

But that was just the way of things, wasn’t it? In the end, Stanley Pines is always set apart. Always on his own.

And the portal had been like a promise. Finish it, find the place he’s always known must exist, the place where he doesn’t feel so out of place. The place where he…fits. 

The place where he isn’t alone anymore. 

That’s why it hurts, so much, so exquisitely, when he steps through the portal and  _knows_. The skin of the world breaking around him, the sight of the world beyond…the sure and certain knowledge, striking down like a thunderbolt. 

Stan was right.

Lee’s never felt so betrayed. Not even when his own twin, the one person in the whole world who had ever come close to understanding him, had turned his back, walked out on their project, taking two-thirds of Lee’s research with him - even that holds nothing to the tsunami of shame, of guilt, that breaks over Lee even as the portal closes behind him. He’s been sold a lie. The idea of a place where he fits, where he doesn’t always feel  _strange_  - it’s a lie. A cruel trick, a lifeline dangled and then snatched away.

But it’s far too late for regrets. He is here, now, in this nightmare of a world, with his only exit irrevocably closed behind him, and no one on the other side stupid enough to reopen it. He is trapped.

And Stanley Pines knows he has no one to blame but himself.

…

This time, it will work. It  _has_  to work. 

The portal rocks unsteadily on its single point as it powers up, but it stands. Gravity reverses, disengages, pulls Stan through a series of sickening loop-the-loops, but the portal still hums to life, its centre lighting up a brilliant blue. Stan lets out a laugh that’s perilously close to a sob, presses his hand to his mouth and swallows down the laughter so that he won’t burst into tears.

After all these years.  _Finally_.

The hum of the portal rises through the octaves until it reaches a deafening crescendo, the housing rocking wildly from side to side, already starting to break down. It’s now or never. Stan holds his breath as he carefully anchors the rope he’s tied around his waist, crosses his fingers before checking and double-checking the knots. 

He’s not satisfied with the results. But if he waits until he is, then he’ll never do this.

It’s time to go save his brother.

Passing through the portal is - strange, a little like breaking the surface of a pool. Stan barely spares a glance for the world beyond, for the too-curious eyes that settle on him. His attention is consumed by the human figure floating, dwarfed by the enormity of the world it inhabits, just within reach.

He only has to punch two eldritch abominations in the mandibles on the way out. Pulling himself back along the rope with Ford’s unconscious body slung under one arm is, surprisingly, less difficult than Stan had prepared for. At least his time in Colombia’s been good for something.

The portal is already starting to close as Stan hauls them both through, burning through its fuel like their ma through a pack of cigarettes, and Ford loses a shoe to whatever nightmare dimension is on the other side of that thing. Still, it’s not a foot, and when they both collapse to the concrete, they’re each in one piece.

Ford lets out a long sigh when Stan untangles himself and sits up, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Stan takes advantage of the moment to get a good look at his brother for the first time in thirty years. Ford doesn’t seem to have aged a day, though he’s had a change of clothes - the black tee shirt is new, but it suits him, if he’d dressed more like that in high school maybe he wouldn’t’ve had to complain so much about how he couldn’t get a date. 

Stan has about thirty seconds to panic, to scream internally about how no time seems to have passed for Ford at all and whether Ford is going to wake up and just deck him, with the memory of their fight fresh in his mind, whether Ford will even recognise him when he wakes up, whether Ford will wake up at all - when Ford blinks open his eyes, waves one six-fingered hand blearily in front of his face, and asks, weakly, “Where are my glasses?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got them,” Stan says, fumbling in his suit jacket because he knows the pair of horn-rimmed frames with the crack in the left lens are in there, he’s been carrying them around since those damn kids found Ford’s room, if he could just get his massive sausage fingers to cooperate -

“Stan?” Ford asks, in a quiet, small voice, the kind of voice that’s trying very hard not to hope, and Stan whips Ford’s glasses out of his breast pocket and then all but tosses them aside to wrap both arms around his brother in an enormous bear hug. 

He’s half expecting to get punched in the jaw. He’s not expecting Ford’s arms to come up, shaky and hesitant, and to reach around his back, first tentatively, then squeezing with all the might in them as Ford buries his face in Stan’s shoulder.

“I - you - I didn’t think anyone was coming for me,” Ford gasps, between laughs - or are they sobs? - and Stan grabs him tighter, squeezing until he’s sure he can hear a rib pop.

“Don’t be such a knucklehead, poindexter,” he mumbles, gruff, curling his fingers into the soft cotton of Ford’s tee shirt. “No matter what happened between us, you know I never could’ve left you there.”

Ford’s hands grip Stan’s shoulders, and he draws in a huge, shuddering breath.  The old burn scar on Stan’s right shoulderblade twinges at the rough contact, but Stan doesn’t move.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he admits, in a voice that’s barely a whisper. “Shit, Ford, I missed you so much, it was hell trying to put this thing together without you -”

He stops. Ford’s gone still and quiet, his grip slacking off.

“Ford?” Stan asks, and Ford pulls away, looking up at him with quiet horror in his eyes.

“That’s not my - I’m not -” Ford swallows, pushing himself back across the floor, away from Stan. “Where are my glasses?”

Stan doesn’t answer, just grabs them from where he’d dropped them, holds them out to Ford. Ford takes them, unfolds the arms slowly and shakily without taking his eyes from Stan’s face. He slides them on like he’s slotting the final piece into place on a doomsday device, his hands shaking so badly that he hits himself in the nose with one of the arms before he gets everything lined up.

Throughout the enormous, empty room, there is only the faint  _tick tick tick_  of cooling metal, and then, finally, silence. 

**Author's Note:**

> Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and the multiverse is theoretically infinite.


End file.
